‘Love Story’ is, like ‘My Way’, a case of English lyrics over a French tune. And I’m humming it to myself now, not because I’m going to be talking about love stories (quite the opposite in fact), but because I’m thinking, ‘where do I begin?’.

At the beginning, perhaps, which was the front-page story in an English newspaper earlier this week. Lib-Dem leader Nick Clegg may, it transpires, have known that one of his party’s former top people had been accused of sexually harassing staff. I am a Brit, and therefore accustomed to this kind of story, but I was sitting on a French train when I read it, which might explain my initial reaction. I thought to myself: if France’s party leaders had to admit they’d known about similar goings-on amongst their party members, there’d be no room in French newspapers for a sports section, the business… Read more